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4 Orbital Virtual Terminal pitfalls for business to business

The Chase Paymentech Orbital™ Virtual Terminal and Gateway is a mature credit card processing solution for card not present merchants. In this article we expose the shortcomings for B2B merchants using the VT as of June 2012.

Mobile payments has created a new opportunity for B2B merchants to accept payments in person, mitigating risk, potentially reducing cost of accepting credit cards, and providing benefits of electronically stored signed receipts.

B2B merchants also accept checks, but the Orbital Electronic Check function is available only to Paymentech merchants, and only to those merchants processing on the Salem platform. This severely restricts who can use the service and eliminates portability.

Paymentech does have the iTerminal for retail transactions, but it this is a separate program from the virtual terminal. Transactions key entered on the iTerminal are considered retail transactions requiring face to face and signed receipt.

2. The Orbital Virtual Terminal does not require additional data for Purchasing Cards.

Statistics prove over and over that virtual terminal users will consistently do what’s required and nothing more, putting merchant profit margins in the hands of their employees. Users simply bypass any fields that are not required. How does this impact profits? For example, the interchange rates for MasterCard commercial, Business Enhanced, Business World and Business World Elite cards issued in the U.S high end is 3.17% and $.10/transaction and the low end is Commercial Data Rate 3 at 1.92% + USD 0.10. Large tickets are as low as 0.70% + USD 0.00. One of the key factors to qualify for the lower rates is sending the right data with the transaction.

Does your gateway help you qualify for the lowest interchange rates possible? CenPOS prompts for exactly the information needed for every card type- including level III data. The user has no decision making power. At the other extreme, some gateways require all the extra fields get completed- what a collossal waste of time. CenPOS prompts for just the right information for that card type- nothing more, nothing less.

Merchants can access real time reports for 7 years.

Merchants can search by many fields, including customer name, and custom fields that you create on the fly.

DISCLAIMER: This review uses publicly available information posted on the Chase Paymentech web site as of 6/5/2012. The review does not include the processor, just the virtual terminal. It is not a comprehensive review of all the positive nor negative points. Merchants should identify and talk to a sales consultant to determine the best solution for their situation. Contact 3D Merchant Services for both the Orbital and CenPOS solutions. Each has a place in the market and we’ll help guide you to the right solution for your business.